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The never ending quest for a proper home for the Oakland Athletics.

News for 7/12/11

Back from a much-needed camping trip, and I’m ready to deal with the anger and frustration. And boy, is there a lot of it. Wouldn’t you be frustrated if the man who holds your future in his hands answers questions in this manner?

Q. What is the latest on the possible relocation to San Jose for the A’s franchise?

COMMISSIONER SELIG: Well, the latest is, I have a small committee who has really assessed that whole situation, Oakland, San Francisco, and it is complex. You talk about complex situations; they have done a terrific job. I know there are some people who think it’s taken too long and I understand that. I’m willing to accept that. But you make decisions like this; I’ve always said, you’d better be careful. Better to get it done right than to get it done fast. But we’ll make a decision that’s based on logic and reason at the proper time.

Selig held steady on other pressing topics, such as the Dodgers, the CBA, realignment, and instant replay.

“I’m happy getting doubles. It’s the type of thing where I know I’m not going to be a 20-homer guy in Oakland. Not in that ballpark.”

Imagine if teams could trade draft rights in baseball the same way they could in the other three leagues. Pick signability would take yet another hit for the A’s as long as the Coliseum remained their home.

Despite the A’s struggles on the field, TV ratings at CSN California have seen a slight rise annually from 1.23 last summer to 1.33 this summer. That combined with the slight rise in attendance should mean something, shouldn’t it? If so, what?

Even as cities are looking to sue the state over the death of redevelopment, at least three cities are looking at ways to potentially work within the system. So far that includes the three most prominent cities: Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco. Both Oakland and San Jose have said initially that they can’t afford to pay the price to keep their RDA’s functioning. We’ll see about that.

The Florida Marlins are closing off the upper deck at Sun Life Stadium for the rest of the year, with the exceptions of a dog-oriented game in August and the final home game ever in the stadium. Looks like fans are holding out until the next year in the new, air-conditioned space, which is oh-so-Miami sports fan.

The funeral for fallen Rangers fan Shannon Stone was held on Monday in Brownwood, TX. The Rangers and Brownwood have set up memorial funds for Stone’s family, to which the A’s contributed $5,000.

As part of its continued correction, Cisco Systems may lay off anywhere from 5,000 to 10,000 jobs before the end of the year, up to 14% of its current workforce. A reduction of 5,000 jobs would save $1 billion in costs and increase profitability 8% in 2012, according to Bloomberg.

There’s a half-serious movement emanating from SoCal to have 13 counties secede from California to form their own largely conservative state. Secession efforts have occurred in the past, mostly from the also largely conservative counties in the northernmost section of the state. It’s not really relevant to the ballpark or baseball economics discussion except that it provides an interesting “what if” scenario if it ever came to pass. Would the new state, which would include Orange and San Diego counties, be more or less friendly to potential franchise relocation candidates? How would they relate to teams who have outdated facilities?

Lastly, it appears that there’s a post-doubleheader tailgate happening on Saturday and a slew of activities before the first game. Given that those of us who are attending will be unable to leave the stadium between games, how about a mini meetup during the intermission? I’m open to suggestions as to where in the O.co Coliseum.

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23 thoughts on “News for 7/12/11”

ML, I heard that too, about Cisco. As terrible as it might be for the company, what does it mean–if anything–towards a possible stadium in SJ at least, regarding the name of the park? Is there a possibility that Cisco could be dropped as the name and using another if troubles continue?

@DavidL – For now it means nothing. Remember that currently Cisco is getting some marketing mileage out of Cisco Field without having to spend any money on the actual naming rights. That could change if San Jose came to fruition and, say, John Chambers were no longer CEO. But that’s years down the road. Considering all of the corrective steps he has to make to right the ship, the naming rights deal is little more than a rounding error. The write-off of Pure Digital – $515 million in one year – is over 100x the annual value of the naming rights deal and could’ve paid for a really fancy stadium in its own right.

Q. What is the latest on the possible relocation to San Jose for the A’s franchise?

COMMISSIONER SELIG: Well, the latest is, I have a small committee who has really assessed that whole situation, Oakland, San Francisco, and it is complex. You talk about complex situations; they have done a terrific job. I know there are some people who think it’s taken too long and I understand that. I’m willing to accept that. But you make decisions like this; I’ve always said, you’d better be careful. Better to get it done right than to get it done fast. But we’ll make a decision that’s based on logic and reason at the proper time.

…Translation: This would be a tough decision that would ruffle some feathers. But Selig does not make tough decisions and, in the old boy network and monopoly of MLB, he simply can get away with doing absolutely nothing. He can even get correspondence from 75 Silicon Valley CEOs and totally ignore it. Perhaps it’s time for Congress to come in, take away the anti trust exemption and break up MLB into two separate, independent, competing leagues?

I’m new to this site and wanted to give thanks to you for running it. It’s a fantastic, and informative site. Even though my head is spinning because of watch B.S. dance around this issue, I wanted to thank you!

Hopefully, this DOES signal that San Jose could happen, given Oakland’s complete silence on the draft EIR for the last-chance Victory Court site. Doesn’t look good…FWIW, Cisco’s naming rights deal is a drop in the bucket and the ballpark is supposed to showcase Cisco technologies, no? A marketing coup for Cisco.

in other news 95.7 has become a complete shame of a flagship for a’s fans hoping it would be a home where you can talk about a’s baseball thru out the day. of course it’d help if they were to hire a host on the station that grew up an a’s fan like tittle on the flagship station of the a’s but that’s just too much to comprehend for entercom or barrett the new program director who are disaapointing the majority of their listenership.

so we’ll stuck with more sf sports talk than oakland sports talk for the past three months and things don’t look to be change and why shouldn’t it be that way when there are more people as host on 95.7 that grew up as sfg fans than there are a’s fans which happens to be a big fat ZERO!

LGA,
What is there to talk about with the A’s? There is only so many ways you can say they suck. Townie is great, but there is only so much even he can do. Notice how his regular show has had less A’s talk lately? As much as I hate them, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that the Giants make for better talk radio right now. Not only that, but it was naive to think Entercom could make a legitimate rival station to KNBR if they didn’t have a significant amount of Giants talk.
I choose to focus on the positive. Last year the drive time was Michael Savage instead of Townsend and the year before that it was a Christian radio station and Buan for the postgame. Baby steps…

there seems to be plenty of a’s talk on the post game show and when tittle is doing his show. you telling me that every team that has stunk their FLAGSHIP RADIO STATION can’t talk about how to address the problem be it promoting those at AAA or discuss interesting and REALISTIC trade scenarios for this team.

sure sfg are more intereseting now coming off a ws win and in first place in the first half but they got two radio stations kissing their asses. you think any die hard sfg fans are listening or calling into 95.7 right now. in fact do you hear anybody calling in to 95.7 these days? doesn’t seem like it when they’re trying to cover the bay area and the other teams. when did 95.7 get the most phone calls recently? when tittle did his two hour spot on june 30th where for two hours he took phone calls thru out his show, something the other shows other than townsend that try to talk all bay area don’t do and here’s a shocker, they rarely get people calling in because of the majority of the listeners for 95.7 aren’t bay area sports fans. they’re fans of the teams from oakland that don’t get any kind of love from either sports station here locally.

you can talk sfg thru out the day, sure, i don’t expect 95.7 to completely ingore them like both knbr radio stations and csnba programming do with the a’s, but 95.7 is the flagship of the a’s and the main focal point and discussion for most of the day onthe radio station should be promoting the a’s more so than the other teams in this market.

I really don’t want 95.7’s programming to become another one of those topics that gets thrown into every comment thread. The station has a pattern. When the A’s play well – such as when they swept the Giants – all shows are open to talk A’s. When they don’t play well talk goes to the backburner except on the pre and post-game shows. The Giants get coverage because they’re winning and no one wants more than cursory talk about the NFL lockout. If the Giants sucked or training camp was starting soon it would be a different story.

okay but when they talk about sfg nobody is calling in to talk about them. there’s a reason for that. because 99% of sfg fans are listening and calling into either knbr station. so what do we get? we get shows for example like jackson with dibley from 10am-1pm who talk among themselves for 3 hours rarely taking phone calls. that goes for what the morning show with monty gave us for 3 months.

again when tittle was on air, he took phone calls thru out his show. isn’t that what you want from a host, a guy who you know will take phone calls even if gasp it’s about one team, the one team that you broadcast on your station 162 times a year.

i can’t think of a flagship station anywhere and i listen to a lot of sports radio online across the country that treats a team that they broadcast with the lack of coverage that 95.7 gives the a’s on the daily schedule.

why because he’s on sportsbyline? townsend, bruce, krueger were on sportsbyline too in recent years and all seem to do well when given a chance on a major sports radio outlet. if you just talk about the a’s here in this bay area market which tittle does the most that you’re on the “fringe” and don’t deserve to be recognized as a great talent which imo he is.

also tittle isn’t some a’s only honk who can only talk about the a’s on his show. he can talk about all teams here in the bay area. he does so on his radio show, he’s on csnba’s chron live where it’s not just all a’s talk or even raiders talk and they keep inviting him on. he did it on his two hour stint about two weeks ago when he took phone calls and talked not only about the a’s but every pro team in this market whether it was the giants, niners, raiders, sharks, and he even talked some euro football.

imo he’s one of the most knowledgeable people here locally working the radio and i think most who listen to him be it if you’re an east bay sports fans or are fans of the sf teams, you’d respect his knowledge of the entire bay area landscape in sports. why he hasn’t been hired i just don’t get. him being more east bay centric than everybody else in this market shouldn’t be a black mark on him on why he shouldn’t be hired by 95.7.

@letsgoas – Dude! Your obsession with the programming on 95.7 and Rick Tittle is borderline unhealthy. It’s Sports Radio, not Shakespeare. The hosts are generally disposable, as are the discussion topics. If Tittle gets a show on 95.7, great. If he doesn’t it’s not a tragedy. Move on.

i as an a’s fan and i’d guess thousands of others have been waiting for YEARS for a sports radio station of our own and are just really disappointed with the way 95.7 is running it’s station right now. to not have one single a’s fan as a host which tittle would be on the flagship of the team thru 3 months imo is just a bad way to please what i believe is the make up of your listenership. i want the station to succeed and imo what they’re doing right now with their programming is driving away a lot of the fans that you should be trying to keep and expand on.

it’s not just me. go to the 95.7 facebook page and there are dozens of other a’s fans, and i’m pretty sure many other sports fans here locally in the bay area, who for 3 months now have listened almost every day and want this station to work out but are sick of the lack of coverage the supposed flagship radio station of the a’s gives the team.

i can’t think of any fans across the country who would like it if their radio home would be talking as much and probably more about their area “rival” than the supposed home team themselves.

Marine Layer does such a good job discussing everything related to the VERY IMPORTANT issue, the very least you could do is respect his wishes and not talk about something as off-topic as 95.7’s choice of hosts and discussions. There are many other more appropriate places to discuss this.

Let’s get back to discussing the important issue – A NEW BALLPARK! This wasn’t the appropriate thread to be complaining about Rick Tittle (who I happen to like) not getting a job at 95.7. I can obviously tell from his total obsession with sports radio/Rick Tittle that “letsgoas” is “athleticpride” from the Scout.com A’s board. He also posts on the Rich Lieberman 415 Media Blog from time to time.

By the way, does anything Selig stated sound like the status quo will be forced on the A’s/Wolff; i.e. being forced to stay in Oakland/Alameda County and “giving in” to the selfish, ultra-wealthy Ginats? I say no.
(I know I spelled “G’s” wrong, but decided to leave it as is out of disrespect).

Tony, I am not going to argue with you, although I feel that you seem overly compelled to react to anything that sounds even remotely pro-Oakland, or Oakland-optimistic. I leave you alone with many of your comments, whether I think you are being realistic or not, without jumping to conclusions. Here’s the big “if”: SJ doesn’t work and Oakland does: what would be your reaction? Just curious, considering both cities’ budget woes.